Christmas Yearly Recap
A small thank you for all my clients across the US.
I am happy to say that this year I have lots of holiday cards to send my clients! When I opened for business in the middle of 2019 I only had 3 Christmas cards to send. But at the end of 2020 I now have 27 to mail out. I am very grateful for each one taking a chance on me and letting me be their go to website guy. They have been all instrumental in supporting me and my family after losing my main job due to COVID-19.
It has been a very interesting year to say the least. I started the year out as I have for the past 8 years by doing Uber for three 18 hour days in Seattle on the weekend and my business was kind of a side gig I did when I was able to sign a new client. I was also doing school full time online in my uber car in between passengers, while also coding websites. The rest of my free time was spent being a stay-at-home dad with the kids while the wife worked during the week.
Then on March 3 2020, Seattle announced lockdown orders for the city as the pandemic began to pick up. That was the day I drove back home for an undetermined amount of time until it was safe to drive Uber again. I have asthma, so I am a high risk individual and I can't risk catching it so I bit the bullet and stayed inside. My income dropped to almost $0 but I still had a couple paying clients to at least bring in a little money while I figured things out. It was starting to look like Ubering in Seattle would never be the same again, and it was a couple weeks after that day I decided HAD to make my side gig into my MAIN gig. It was the best shot I had at working during a pandemic.
I spent hours and hours scouring yelp and google for small businesses with either no websites or rough looking ones and I just went down my list of businesses to call for an entire day. I did this 10 hours a day for months. It was heartbreaking at times because there were some days people were just flat out hateful or name calling, or accusing me of being those spam callers from overseas and it got to the point that I took days off and started to think if I should really do this and if it can work. But then I get one or two who are genuinely nice people and we had long conversations about our families and our work and they decided to take a chance on me. It only takes a few to keep you going and stay hopeful. Maybe after 100 calls I'd find 5 who were genuinely interested in what I do, who I am, and how in the world I found them.
I spent months making calls and talking to alot of amazing people who are now the core of my business, and who I can consider friends. At a time where I was isolated to my home, it was a nice feeling taking calls from my clients to make edits, or help them set up their Xbox Live for their kids over the phone, talk about how we're doing, and one even asked my advice about when to get a surgery! I didn't realize it at first, but at the same time I was building a business, I was also building relationships. Being a military family on a military island, the friends you make eventually leave to go on orders to other parts of the country, and eventually everyone I had in my circle was gone. My wife was one of the few who kept getting orders to stay right where we are. But now, with every new client I feel like that circle gets a little bigger.
Looking back at the year, I was very worried and concerned about the future for our family and what I was going to do because of COVID, but I am lucky enough to have been able to turn a terrible situation into a unique opportunity to build something myself and be in charge of my future instead of a spectator. After graduating this month on December 14, I can confidently say I accomplished everything I set out to do this year. I'm actually looking forward to seeing what comes for the new year and hoping I can keep making amazing connections with people, and helping their businesses grow.
